Paper short abstract:

By examining linguistic and literary representations of alienation and dislocation in post-9/11 soldiers’ accounts of homecoming in oral history, memoir, and narrative nonfiction, we see that sense-making and place-making are entwined, inventing both personal and national identity.

Paper long abstract:

For American military, homecoming is "redeployment"— embedded in the word is an acknowledgment that returning from war is a new kind of battle, and the place you come home to is never the place you left. This paper examines post-9/11 soldiers' accounts of homecoming in oral history, memoir, and narrative nonfiction, focusing on linguistic and literary representations of alienation and dislocation. Just as memories of war interrupt and intrude upon civilian life, stories of homecoming are begun, backed out of, haltingly reframed and reattempted—the narrator often spends as much time outside of the story as within it. As historian Hayden White points out, "from the standpoint of an interest in narrative itself, a 'bad' narrative can tell us more about narrativity than a good one" (White 1981:14). These hedged, half-told stories are exploded diagrams, the labor of narrative made visible. The processes of sense-making and place-making are entwined in veterans' narratives, because their stories do not just redefine their own histories, but the character of the country in whose name they fought. Unresolved narratives act as temporary shelters, structures to be disassembled and repurposed with difficulty, as veterans struggle to find stories that both they and their audiences can live with[in].

White, Hayden. 1981. "The Value of Narrativity in the Representation of Reality." On Narrative, Ed. W.J.T. Mitchell. pp. 1-25. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press.